SmokeSound

"Hallo, Olav!  Is that you? Are you here in town, too?"      [Some discourse is entirely rhetorical;        not intended to convey information.] I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly noise, and the people will say, "Look at him tear his shirt."                               --Carl Sandburg      [We, the people, in order to form       a more pedestrian union.] "Is ever'body in Akron bein'-hayve theirse'f this mornin'?"        [Waitress to a Policeman       who stopped in for coffee.]

"What do you do?", people ask, meaning, "What can old turkeys like you do?". We forage for food, of course. Teresa's Mosaic Cafe is a favorite spot, as is Wildflower Café. Personally, I love Mariscos Chihuahua, and Mari likes The Wretched Onion because they have large pancakes, but I refuse to go there:  principles, you know. Mari likes to sew, and takes classes. She especially like to make quilted things, and I do not like to boast, but I am something of a specialist in thinking about things I really ought to do. Jao--that is not Jao: even a three-year-old deserves his modesty, although he continues to misplace it--is learning to . . . to. . . .   He is being potty trained. I have given a lot of thought to what grandparents can do to help a three-year-old become a decent human being when he grows up; you know, what I really ought to do. I would like for Jao to remember, someday, that we were the ones who taught him how...

The earth formed about four-and-a-half billion years ago.   That is to say, about ten billion years after the Big Bang, and about four-and-a-half billion years before The Creation. At first, earth was a very cold place, ducking its head to avoid a hailstorm of meteorites, to no avail, and later on earth became so hot, under the bombardment, that it might have been molten. Even so, life formed not long after, as the age of the universe is measured.  Life seems to be something the universe does rather easily.  That we don't know exactly how it happened does not mean that the universe is not good at doing it. * * *  Yesterday, some dear friends visited us.  Gene and I went to college together, and then to a theological seminary.  When our families were new, we lived in the Bay area of California, and saw each other regularly.  With rare exception, we have not seen each other for about half a century. Gene said, when he first phoned, that he ha...

There is a kind of shadow reality in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is what one sees, if not really on the surface, then what we have been trained to see, something like the building here:  "Pueblo architecture!", we say.  "New Mexico!  I recognize it!" But it is not even half what we see:  it is what is shadowed.  And what is shadowed is . . . yeah . . . how deep are those shadows? Santa Fe is a kind of Fritz Scholder Indian.  It is what we see, and what is shadowed.  It is like saying that Santa Fe was founded in 1610.  "La Villa Real de las Santa Fe de San Franciso de Asis":  (the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi).  Except that there had been people living there-- right there! --perhaps already for seven hundred years.  You can see them clearly in the shadows. Mari and I had lunch in The Alley Cantina--formerly, El Patio, in nearby Taos, and were told that one of the kitchen walls entitled it to be ...

Let us now tell Tales of the Pioneers, and Trudging to School Through Snowdrifts; maybe even How the Nuns Used to Rap our Nuckles as a Way to Gain a Respect for Education and the Catechism and Celibacy. I cannot do those things.  Born in western Washington State, I can remember a winter when it snowed nearly a foot, and I never met a nun until I was old enough to be a grown man, although not that. I do remember that--our family being larger than our house and our resources--a number of us slept in what was a hen house; clean, with a single-board wall, and a miserably ineffective wood-burning stove for the most brittle winter nights.  Or only for bedtime.  Long before morning, the stove was cold, too. But all of that is just background scenery for saying that there was a stack of Zane Grey books in the chicken coop.  Zane Grey by flashlight.  Zane Grey and the Riders of the Purple Sage.  Under the Tonto Rim.  Valley of Wild Horses.  Tall, ta...

Republican and Democrats DO agree and disagree together about something! Donald Trump insists that the Republican debates should not be more than two hours long.  And Hillary Clinton does not want more than six debates. See?   The frontrunners in both parties are not in favor of giving their competitors time to catch up. (I do not call him, "The Donald") so I shall say The Trump wants all the debates to begin with, and to end with, canned statements from the candidates:  questions and answers can be inserted in the middle, when people get tired of listening, anyway.  (I do not call her, "The Hillary") so I shall say that The Other Clinton knows that if there are a lot of debates, people will get tired of hearing about just about everything, so don't debate too much.  Given too much time, even Lincoln Chafee might begin to look better:  Why take the chance? If you are leading halfway through the half-marathon, why agree to extend the race to mara...

You know how hard it is for me to be partisan (you may take that as monumental unawareness), but please let me be partisan for a moment! We listened to the Democratic debate last night, and even though Joe Biden was not there-- which would have made it a lot more fun-- it was almost like listening to grown-ups. At least three of the debaters displayed thoughtfulness and knowledge of the issues. There were, to be sure, a couple of guys who seriously thought they were ready for the big time, but who are never going to make it. Anderson Cooper did his best to irritate them where it really hurt, but they were all sensible. It is about jobs, education, health care, wars and rumors of wars, inevitable wars and hopeless wars, and immigration and racism and gender equality, our energy use and abuse, and an equitable economic system for sharing the wealth we have as a nation. And that is what they talked about. We may have a chance.

Two score and seven years ago-- you may take that to be 47 years ago-- I sat in a library carrel in the middle of the night, parceling and piecing my dissertation together, when I read something sane to keep my head while all those about me were losing theirs. I memorized it without even intending to: And I will take off my shirt and tear it, and make a razzly-dazzly noise, and the people will look at me and say, that man is tearing his shirt. It had been cautiously attributed to Carl Sandburg, and three things seemed to make that plausible: "the people", "razzly-dazzly", and the pedestrian response to an impetuous thing to do. I might have written more than one chapter to an undying dissertation while I tried to track down the source of that quote.  In addition to reading enough Carl Sandburg to raise me well above the academic trough in which I had been wallowing, I thumbed a hundred volumes in which the people tore their pedestrian shir...

Here is a conundrum for you:  who should be in charge of doing what we say should not be done? A conundrum is a confusing or difficult situation.  A conundrum is the United States Congress.  A conundrum is the lineup of people who say they want to be President.  A conundrum is the way we narrow the field of presidential candidates, pretending to get the best one:  for instance, go to the Iowa State Fair and toss corn kernels into a jar.  A conundrum is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.  A conundrum is suggesting that the three Republican candidates with absolutely no experience in government are the favorites for being in charge of government.  A conundrum would be to suggest that the worst Sheriff in the Universe--Joe Arpaio--would make the best CEO for Hewlett-Packard or IBM. Whether it is true or not, or whether it is just true that people are thoroughly disgusted with the politicians they continue to re-elect, people say they h...

The Pacific Basin So that we understand each other, and as a way of stating the obvious, I have not been asked to help design the new Pacific Trade Pact. I recall, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was being crafted, that one of the issues at stake was the fact that a lot of Latin American workers were coming to the U.S. for work in factories, and that American workers were worried that their own wages would erode, or jobs would be lost. Everyone knew that poverty alongside prosperity, or hunger alongside plenty, could not sustain themselves. Everyone knew that the economies of Latin American countries had to improve, that it had to become possible for people there to find jobs there, in order for them to stay there, if that is what they wanted to do. So that is what happened.  U.S. and Canadian companies shifted some of their factories south of the border. Labor was cheaper there, there were no unions there, and goods could be sent back north r...

A Sign Sign "You here, too?" A Study in Repetition "S'posed to have flowers!" Family Gathering "Look at him:  drinking from a can!" Drinking from a Can. "You what!" Burrowing Owl, Whilst Not Burrowing "Say that again?" Stare Down Through a Glass, Looking Darkly

 While on a recent trip to the Mid-West to be with family for Margaret's funeral, I had time, before returning the rental car, to stop at the Nokomis Beach Coffee Café--which no one calls the Nokomis Beach Coffee Café.  It is just "The Café", at the corner of 28th Avenue and 50th Street, in south Minneapolis, a block or two east of Lake Nokomis.  It is one of the great places on earth. Because it was late on a Sunday morning, I did not recognize a single person at the Café.  No matter!  It is there that Dennis and Mary have managed a little corner of the world so that people are welcome and can meet each other.  It is there that Mari and I have met some of the best people we know. We do not have such a café in Tucson.  I am sure there are some, but the coincidence of location and life has not brought us to them as The Café in south Minneapolis did, or as earlier cafés did in Decorah, Iowa.  Chief among them all, in our experience, was the...

"It didn't read your card because I haven't rang up nothing yet."      --A clerk at a store         explaining why         rang-ing up nothing         is necessary. "There are times when you want the Breaking News sounder, and times when you don't. This is one of those times."      --A radio host          explaining that this         is a time.

The old men say Jacob wrestled all night at the river Jabbok with an angel.   Maybe it was not really an angel: maybe it was God; maybe with himself, but that, ever after, Jacob walked with a limp, having come to terms with himself. Margaret Minke was born in Toledo, Ohio, into a German Lutheran family. She used to laugh kindly at her German-born grandmother, for whom the English language was something like würst, composed of loose parts and pressed together. Margaret’s mother was confirmed in German, in Toledo, forever remembering how to say  the ordinaries of life as her mother did, in the German Lutheran way. Margaret moved to California, as her sister had, and when other German Lutherans established a theological seminary at the top of Marin Avenue in Berkeley, she went there, perhaps for a job, possibly for a vocation, and was convinced to stay. She could not become a pastor:  that was for men. She might, she was told...